Make Sure Your Emails Are Delivered

Many times we must send emails to a client, or to multiple clients. Unfortunately, 60% of the emails we receive are junk emails, and legitimate emails get trashed. This is what is known as a false positive. So what can you do to make sure your clients get the emails you are sending?

One of the most important things you can do is to become a "trusted or approved sender". The name of this feature will vary from email client. You will be one step closer to success if they add you. So, how do I make sure my emails get through?

Today, most of our communication is over the phone and Internet. Literally millions of emails are sent out every day. Unfortunately, over 60% of these emails are SPAM. Not only is this a nuisance, it has forced our ISP’s to employ email blocking and filtering techniques that can cause your legitimate emails to bounce back or be dumped in the infamous SPAM bin. AOL and Yahoo are currently in the process of setting up a system where you will have to pay to make sure your emails are delivered. I go into detail about these changes in my article “What are Yahoo and AOL up to?”

As an Internet business, we make our living from emailing our customer’s. Before we applied the techniques I am going to describe below, we were receiving numerous phone calls and emails alerting us to the fact that the intended recipients had never received their emails. Once again, this can be extremely time consuming and can be a customer service nightmare. Your customers don’t want to hear about email problems, they want results. They expect that email to be in their inbox, no questions asked!

While there is no way to be 100% sure every time that your emails will make it through cyberspace unscathed, the advice I am including in this article will certainly increase your level of success!

1. The number one thing that you can do to make sure your emails are received is to become a trusted sender. How do you do this? Each email client has a way to do this. Simply have your customers add you to their email address book. If your software has an approved sender or a trusted sender list, have them add you to this list. If you mail out a newsletter, one of the first things you should ask your subscribers is that they add your email address as a trusted email address.

2. Do NOT USE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS! Not only is this really annoying and difficult to read, SPAM filters will quickly pick up on this, as Spammers love to get their point across.

3. Check for misspellings. This is truly just something you should do anyway, but Spammers often misspell words to get past filters.

4. Do not use SPAM like words such as: Free, credit card, sex and guarantee

5. Click Here…most individuals are pretty web savvy now, and they know what a hyperlink is. An abundant use of “click here” will certainly trip up most spam filters. If you use a link, have a descriptive link.

6. The absence of a “From” address is another red flag that will certainly trigger spam filters. Also, don’t try to use tricks such as putting Re: in the subject line, and attempt to trick the recipient that they are responding to an email. This is illegal, and it will certainly irritate the recipient.

7. Excessive punctuation and dollar signs are another thing that trigger spam catchers. Yes, you may be extremely excited about a new product or need an answer quickly, but reframe from. !!! ???? and $$$$ One way to really trip a spam filter is to use these special characters with “Spam-like” words.

8. If you are going to be sending large amounts of emails, make sure you use a legitimate mailing service. Good reporting is extremely important! Use a service that offers information on bounce back, spam scans and %’s received and opened. You should check your emails that have bounced as most will contain simple spelling errors, such as “con” instead of “com” or a “-“ instead of an “_”. Email addresses that are invalid should certainly be removed from your list.

9. Believe it or not, using the word “unsubscribe” can also fire off spam filters. By law, you must include a way for your subscribers to unsubscribe. Here is a great sentence you can use. “You are currently subscribed as yourname@yourdomain.com if you would prefer not to receive emails, please use this link. “Please use this link” would be the hyperlink to let them unsubscribe. Such as mailto:unsubscribe@yourlink.com

10. Lastly, make sure that you immediately remove individuals that unsubscribe immediately. The last thing you want is your server to be blacklisted! We have known individuals who have had their websites shut down by not including the ability to unsubscribe, and or not following up by removing these individuals.

Cut down on the spam in your inbox. Use this script on your website to hide your e-mail address from harvesting robots.

http://javascript.internet.com/miscellaneous/hide-e-mail-address.html

This article was written by Stephen K Knight. You may use this article on your website, or email copies to friends as long as the article remains in its completed form and that the authors name is included.

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